Hellraiser TV Series (HBO)

[Malcy]

https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/hellraiser-tv-series-being-developed-by-hbo/

I like the sound of this but it I hope it captures the horror and decent story of the first few films and not the countless rest that have been released over the years. I rewatched the first 3 last week. I still enjoy them.

Pinhead set to make an appearance and hopefully played by Doug Bradley. When I lived in Ireland there was a guy in the town who was the spitting image of the fat Cenobite with the sunglasses. Uncanny. Used to give me the fear when I saw him! The designs of the Cenobites were great. Got a bit silly if not creative in the third one though.

[JamesTC]

Upgrade the CD cenobite into a Blu-Ray cenobite.

[Hand Solo]

Upgrade the CD cenobite into a Blu-Ray cenobite.

[A Hat Like That]

Hellraiser 2 is a delightfully crazy mess, Kenneth Cranham's finest hour. Can it be like that.

[bgmnts]

No horror icon has been as utterly bumraped as our poor Pinhead.

I do hope this good and disgusting and taboo, like the original film/novel was.


Is Barker not involved then?

[Alberon]

He wrote a Hellraiser novella a few years back which was abysmally awful so I'm not sure it would be a good thing for him to be involved.

[wooders1978]

I've only ever seen hell raiser, is 2&3 worth seeking out? I'd just presumed they were shite to be honest and not bothered

Also, a series is intriguing, I hope they can work a modern day political message into it

[Thomas]

Like wooders, I've only seen the first one. Most of it struck me as more Garth Marenghi than nightmare fuel, though I like the basic idea, along with Mr. Pins and his legion of interdimensional sado-pervs.

The second film is a lean 93-minuter so I'll seek it out.

[Default to the negative]

Maybe the coronavirus gave them the idea that body horror might be due for a comeback, in the same way that 1980s body horror responded to AIDs anxieties. I hope the series will be an anthology of small-scale character-focused stories, with new cenobites each time. I don't want to see a serialised ULTIMATE CONFRONTATION BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL WHICH WILL DECIDE THE FATE OF MANKIND AND BLAH BLAH. They did this in the comics. The result was that all aspects of the cenobites were explored to the point where they were stripped of their mystique and seemed quite mundane in the end.

I've only ever seen hell raiser, is 2&3 worth seeking out? I'd just presumed they were shite to be honest and not bothered

2 is on par with the first film, and it expands the lore a bit. 3 is like a latter-day Nightmare on Elm Street film, with Pinhead spouting one-liners. It's still okay. The franchise gets really shitty when it goes direct-to-video, which begins with the fifth film. It never recovers.

Also, a series is intriguing, I hope they can work a modern day political message into it

They should do an episode about a young Jeffrey Epstein finding a Lament Configuration.

[Alberon]

There was a comic series from Epic based on the original couple of films a good few years ago. Rather than an ongoing series it was more a collection of short stories. Some of them were quite good IIRC.

[Default to the negative]

I might check that out. The series I was referring to was the one published by Boom! It climaxes with the protagonists uniting to use their various special powers against a giant giga-Pinhead. In other words it turned into a superhero comic, which I thought was a wasteful use of the property.

[Mister Six]

He wrote a Hellraiser novella a few years back which was abysmally awful so I%u2019m not sure it would be a good thing for him to be involved.

Yeah Barker's on the wane after that horrible illness a few years back. I read his Pinhead vs Harry D'Amour novel, The Scarlet Gospels, the other month, and while it was rather fun it was more like a gruesome action movie than a horror story, and the Cenobites were retconned from being weird extraterrestrial fetish creeps into being servants of the actual Christian Hell.

However, Barker did give the producers of Hellraisers 3 and 4 some suggestions that they totally ignored (because they're hacks who just wanted to make a gross horror movie, not engage with Barker's strange and vivid imagination) so maybe if the makers of the show can scrape those together, they can make use of them.

I%u2019ve only ever seen hell raiser, is 2&3 worth seeking out? I%u2019d just presumed they were shite to be honest and not bothered

Also, a series is intriguing, I hope they can work a modern day political message into it

2 is kind of wonky, but good stuff with some ace visions of "Hell". 3 is just a daft slasher flick gorefest, but fun enough if you don't bother taking it seriously. They get properly dreadful after that one though.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I've only seen the first one. Most of it struck me as more Garth Marenghi than nightmare fuel

This has prompted a hazy memory of someone on here telling me that Marenghi's "Author, dreamweaver" lines is a direct quote from Barker.

The first two films certainly have some memorable images, although that's not to say either of them are particularly good. 2 had ones of the villains outright describe themselves as evil, which seems to entirely miss the point. 3, as noted above, is slasher movie schlock. I've not watched any of the subsequent films, because I like myself.

[wooders1978]

Cheers fellas, I'm gonna watch hr 2 at least

[Jim Bob]

2 is kind of wonky, but good stuff with some ace visions of "Hell". 3 is just a daft slasher flick gorefest, but fun enough if you don't bother taking it seriously. They get properly dreadful after that one though.

I'll always defend Hellraiser: Bloodline (the 4th one).  It's far better than its reputation would suggest, despite the executive meddling.  I'd certainly place it above Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth.  It's easily Alan Smithee's best film.

[Shaky]

Yeah, Hellraiser 4 is worth a watch and has some pretty grotesque stuff in there. Far better than the tedious 3rd entry, as Jim Bob says. Also features an early appearance from Adam Scott!

I'd also - very tentatively, and perhaps even wrongly - recommend Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002), if only because it's got original protagonist Kirsty back and Barker did a little bit of work on it.

[Malcy]

Yeah, Hellraiser 4 is worth a watch and has some pretty grotesque stuff in there. Far better than the tedious 3rd entry, as Jim Bob says. Also features an early appearance from Adam Scott!

I'd also - very tentatively, and perhaps even wrongly - recommend Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002), if only because it's got original protagonist Kirsty back and Barker did a little bit of work on it.

I had the first 5 on DVD and by that point had enough. Think I  have the rest downloaded somewhere but I've never watched them. I'd be interested to see what Kristy is up to though.

[Shaky]

She's sort of back just for the sake of it as is the way of these franchises but the film is OK, and better than most of the sequels. Don't expect brilliance, obvs!

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

I liked the way that the first film was set in America, but it was a British film, with a mainly British cast, so it seemed like Julia was going out to bars and specifically trying to find and lure British men back to her house to feed to Frank. Maybe she just hung around in bars near the British Embassy or something.

[Jim Bob]

I'd also - very tentatively, and perhaps even wrongly - recommend Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002), if only because it's got original protagonist Kirsty back and Barker did a little bit of work on it.

I agree that out of all of the straight-to-DVD sequels, Hellraiser: Hellseeker is the best of a bad bunch.  It's still not a good movie, but it does have a few redeeming moments, in spite of it being a crap knock-off of Jacob's Ladder (and the second straight-to-DVD Hellraiser sequel to do so, it should be noted) and only having very tenuous links to the lore of Hellraiser; like all of the latter day sequels, Pinhead makes an awkwardly shoehorned in cameo towards the end.

I had the first 5 on DVD and by that point had enough. Think I  have the rest downloaded somewhere but I've never watched them. I'd be interested to see what Kristy is up to though.

I own and have watched all of the Hellraiser sequels on DVD, for my sins.  Awful, awful movies, by and large.  As for Kristy's appearance in Hellraiser: Hellseeker; don't get too excited.  Her role amounts to a cameo.  She bookmarks the beginning and the end of the movie (a few minutes of screentime) and she doesn't even feel like the same character.  At all.

I liked the way that the first film was set in America, but it was a British film, with a mainly British cast, so it seemed like Julia was going out to bars and specifically trying to find and lure British men back to her house to feed to Frank. Maybe she just hung around in bars near the British Embassy or something.

The first film was filmed and set in Britain, but the executives at the production studio (New World) decided that the film would be more marketable if it were set in America and as such, several of the English actors (including Sean Chapman, who played Cousin Frank) were dubbed by American actors during post production.  Interestingly, in the sequel, which doubles down on the story being set in America, Sean Chapman was allowed to voice the character of Frank but does so by putting an an American accent, to fit with the continuity of the retconned original.

[dmillburn]

I don't know why but I've watched all the shitty sequels at least once, and even quite enjoyed some of them for various reasons. I'd agree 4 is actually pretty good and worth seeing if you are a fan, I'd rate it above 3 anyway.

On to the straight to video badness then... I've not watched it for a while but I thought the 5th, Inferno, was alright at the time, although like many of the shittier sequels it suffers from being adapted from an obviously non-Hellraiser script, with a cenobite appearance jammed in to justify being part of the franchise (all of the first 4 direct to video sequels started that way). Scott Derrickson's direction is pretty decent, and it would have made a half-decent non-Hellraiser film. Not great but worth a watch.

Revelations is utter shit, this is the one they made in 2 weeks to keep the rights and used a load of stock footage and it's genuinely one of the worst films I've ever seen. No Doug Bradley in it but the new rubbish camp baby-faced Pinhead isn't even the worst thing about it. If you want to see how bad a franchise can get this is the one to watch. Thankfully it's mercifully short due to the 2 week filming constraints.

Deader is again rubbish with very little in the way of redeeming features apart from a couple of decent little sequences and an appearance from Brass Eye's wanking Senator, Dale Lee Agsby.

Hellworld is just behind Revelations levels of shitness, a clunky horrible teen slasher/Saw type mess and like a lot of the sequels there's a shitty twist ending which appears to be a thing they went for with these later films. However Ron from Goodnight Sweetheart turns up at the end as an American cop, which is nice. Probably only worth a watch if you are a massive fan of Ron from Goodnight Sweetheart (which luckily I am).

I'd agree that Hellseeker was one of the better ones, mainly because it was nice to see Kirstie coming back. It treads a lot of the same ground that Inferno did but does it a bit better.

The latest one, Judgement, was better than I expected considering Doug Bradley wasn't involved and for that reason I was sure I'd hate it. It's fairly gory, certainly the goriest of the direct to video sequels, and introduces some interesting new characters but ultimately it suffers from a fairly generic Saw/Hostel plot that riffs on Seven for the first half.

[Egyptian Feast]

I'll always defend Hellraiser: Bloodline (the 4th one).  It's far better than its reputation would suggest, despite the executive meddling.  I'd certainly place it above Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth.  It's easily Alan Smithee's best film.

It also contains my favourite exchange in the series:

"Although the boy will not die here, for a thousand years his dearest wish will be that he had!"
- "For God's sake!"
"DO I LOOK LIKE SOMEONE WHO CARES WHAT GOD THINKS?"

Definitely much better than 3. The Cenobites aren't nearly as lame, for a start.

[Hand Solo]

Hellraiser 5 Inferno is the best of the shit ones because it has the torso chatterer, the Wire Twins and Crazy Old Wheelchair Man With A Kids Voice.

[bgmnts]

The third one has that guy who has CDs in his face right? That's amazingly shite.

[Kelvin]

To be honest, bar the central conceit, and a few great visuals, the first film isn't much cop either, imo. Vastly superior to the homogenised blandness of the entries from 3 onwards, but still not a great film by any stretch.

2nd is a horror masterpiece, though. Probably my favourite horror film of all time. It's just so utterly demented, and sears every image into your brain. There's nothing more scary than the thought of ending up trapped in that place for eternity.   

[Hand Solo]

2nd is a horror masterpiece, though. Probably my favourite horror film of all time. It's just so utterly demented, and sears every image into your brain. There's nothing more scary than the thought of ending up trapped in that place for eternity.

[Jim Bob]

"We have such shite to show you"

[Spiteface]